Of The Sea And The Stars
by maraudings
Summary: And he knows he doesn't want to be here but he doesn't know where else to go because nowhere is not an option. - for mars (captivation), 2014 valentines day exchange


**title: **of the sea and the stars  
><strong>rating: <strong>t  
><strong>word count: <strong>1,907  
><strong>disclaimer:<strong> the clique series and it's characters belong to lisi harrison**  
><strong>**prompts: **an old walkman, coffee ice cream, a 1986 chevy impala, a tent  
><strong>an: **this is about as far away from fluff as i can go, so it's not exactly super valentines day appropriate. i did start with the intent of making this fairly fluff-y but y'know sometime you start writing and what comes out is not what you had planned for. but i hope your day was joyous and happy and absolutely nothing like what you're about to read okay

( head's up all, death is a big theme in this one )

( also the end gets sloppy and i'm terribly sorry about that but there is really no way to have it all pan out and make sense and end with a lesson or a meaning because as i've discovered that's how life works )

* * *

><p><em>- of the sea and the stars -<em>

* * *

><p>nothing is infinite, not even loss<br>you are made of the sea and the stars,  
>and one day you are going to find yourself again<br>- From The Wreckage, Finn Butler

It's December 5th.

A Thursday. An average, simple, Thursday.

He wakes up at 8:30. He showers. He dresses. He eats breakfast in the kitchen with Griffin and a few of the other boys. Someone tells a joke over their plate of bacon and he laughs.

It's just a Thursday

-x-

He checks his news feed, and he thinks it's a joke at first.

Because how ridiculous. How inconceivable, unimaginable, implausible. He isn't going to fall for it.

But there is something building in the pit of his stomach. Something is brewing, and the feeling is enough for him to pick up his cell phone. It's too ridiculous to be true.

Too ridiculous. Too true.

-x-

She knocks on the front door sometime before noon. Josh answers it, and he can hear their muffled voices from the entrance foyer in his room.

They sound like they're from another country, another planet, another life.

He can't face them.

He can't look at any of them.

-x-

He really doesn't know how long he sat on the floor, but eventually the walls of his room began to push inwards and he's suffocating, unable to breathe. But he stays.

He retrieves a bottle of brown liquid from the bottom drawer of his desk. It should burn as it goes down, but it doesn't. It takes him a moment to notice.

-x-

As the daylight leaves the darkness arrives and it doesn't seem to go away.

-x-

"Derrick? It's Massie. You've been in there for almost two days. Josh is starting to worry. I get that you don't want to come out. I get that you don't want to see anyone. I get it. But eventually you'll have to, and I'll be here when you do."

-x-

"Hey, Massie again. There's some takeout from that place Josh said you liked by the door. You're not the only one hurting, you know. It's hard to hear, it's hard to imagine, but it's not just you."

-x-

"You haven't been to class in a few days, so Griffin got a few of the pledges to take notes in your classes for you. It probably seems like a pointless issue and I'm sure class is the last thing on your mind, but we're trying. We're all trying."

-x-

"Please come out."

-x-

They used to race each other in middle school. They used to see who could touch the opposite goal post before the other. They used to sit in the corner booth at the twenty-four hour diner and order coffee ice cream because it had sugar and coffee and they weren't allowed to have much of either.

They used to do those things. Used to.

And that will forever remain in the past tense.

-x-

The suffocation is still there, pressing and squeezing his lungs until he thinks he could collapse under the pressure.

-x-

He emerges from his room after five days, when notice of a memorial service causes his phone to vibrate off his dresser and fall to the floor with a clatter.

It's in two weeks, intentionally coinciding with the flocks of students returning for the holidays. They would all be there, and he doesn't want to see any of them.

He'll go anyway, of course.

-x-

Two hundred people were expected, but four hundred show up.

The nave is filled, the foyer is standing room only. The church sets up a video feed to get footage of what was happening to a large reception room in the back of the building.

He can't decide if this display of love and affection makes this more sweet than it is bitter.

-x-

The service ends and people are mingling. They are hugging and they are crying and he knows he doesn't want to be here but he doesn't know where else to go because nowhere is not an option.

He sees the grieving parents at the end of the hall, surrounded by a bubble of condolences and well wishes, and he knows he should say something to them.

_I think I failed your son._

_I think I could have done something._

_I think it's my fault._

-x-

What they don't tell you in the movies or the television shows or the novels or in the news is that there is absolutely no beauty in death. There is nothing beautiful about the destruction you leave behind. There is nothing mesmerizing about the way your father can't get through your eulogy, or how your well-spoken brother stands at the podium shaking like a leaf and throwing out strings of sentences that don't make sense but yet everyone else seems to understand. There is nothing graceful about the way your name looks in script on a program or the way everyone else can't say it aloud for weeks after.

They don't tell you anything about the tsunami of devastation you leave behind.

-x-

His mom is acting delicate around him. She walks on eggshells as she tips around the house, asking once about school and then is silent.

His dad is too fixed on being normal. He talks about football and the neighbor's annoying dog and the asshole who tailgated him all the way to work the day before last.

An hour after he returns to his house he knows he needs to get out.

-x-

His car looked the same. It sat in the garage where he had left it, the paint still chipped and the windshield still cracked. It's an old Impala from the eighties he picked up in a used car lot with his own money.

The last time he was in this car Cam was riding shotgun. His pack of gum was probably still in the glove compartment.

It is.

-x-

He knows where he's going. It's the only thing he's been sure of for the past two weeks.

In a last ditch effort to feel anything, he plugs the old walkman, the shoddy replacement to the long dead radio, into the stereo and blasts whatever he left over the summer. It's a mix. The Strokes.

He's there after two songs. The lights are off, which he expected, and the field lays before him like a sea of darkness.

He kills the engine, and he sits. He can't bring himself to get out.

The outline of the goal post looms ahead of him, becoming more blurred and unfocused as time passes.

He can't do it. He can't get out.

But he does.

-x-

At the base of the closest post is a small pile. Of flowers, of cards, of unlit candles. There's a little cross, too.

The only source of light comes from his car, but the headlights do little to cut through the surrounding darkness. It's think and it's dense and maybe if he touches it he'll become consumed.

He's standing where he last stood. He's standing in the last place he ever stood.

In his pocket his phone buzzes. He knows it's Massie but doesn't answer. He hasn't looked at his phone in two weeks.

The far post stands a hundred yards away. He can't see it, but he knows it's there.

He has a desperate thought that he needs to get there. He needs to get there now.

And soon the cold and bitter wind is blowing into his face and into his lungs but he's still suffocating and the light from his stupid old car is fading and the only thing he's running into is more darkness.

He stops at the ten yard line, sinking to the ground. He can't breathe.

Maybe if he screams or yells or tears the grass out from under his feet it would feel better. But he knows it won't. It's all useless.

Cam wouldn't be there at the finish line.

-x-

It's two in the morning and he heads to the twenty-four hour diner they all know so well. On arrival he sees that it's completely empty, save for one waitress and a brunette in a corner booth. He joins her wordlessly.

Her eyes are red and puffy and he understands that this might be the first time she has cried. She has spent the last two weeks checking on everybody else because it was the only thing she felt she could do. She was running from her own grief by seeing that others weren't drowning in theirs. He knows her well enough.

The waitress approaches timidly and he orders for them both.

"Did you go?" She asks, both aware of where she's talking about. It's daunting, and he lets his silence speak for him. "I tried, couldn't stomach it. I got halfway there before I turned around."

He looks at the silverware setting in front of him. The fork was crooked.

"I've been thinking of my last conversation with him, of course. It was a phone call, the day after Thanksgiving. He seemed fine. I don't get it. I keep replaying it over and over again looking for any type of clue or hint or—I don't know—a red flag. Something that could help this make sense. But what I realized is that I'm forgetting what his voice sounds like. It's not sounding right in my head anymore. I think I keep changing it, and now it's lost forever. Has that happened to you yet? Have you started to forget?" She swallows hard. "I was walking to class last week and I saw a red backpack and a green jacket and black adidas and I thought it was him. It wasn't, and it never will be, and part of me hates him for it and hates me for not having done anything about it."

He knows her guilt is normal, but it doesn't compare to his. The number of ignored calls and texts have piled up so high they tent him in blame because if _had _picked up or if he _had _decided not to keep putting off that catch-up phone call or if he had just decided to do fucking _anything_ else—

He bites it down. It's a burden for him to bare alone.

"I feel as if my grief is trivial in comparison to Josh, or Kemp, or Chris, or you. I feel like what I feel is meaningless, or that I don't deserve to be sad over this because in retrospect I hardly knew him. I mean sure, we were friendly and we've talked and I remember how proud he was when he told me he got a full ride to Penn State and he was so excited and ready to move on. I just don't get it. I don't understand."

He doesn't want to hear any of this but she's talking to heal. It's his turn to be right outside the door.

She forces the tiniest of smiles, staring at her hands or the table or out the window or anywhere else that isn't his face and continues. "Even though we didn't see each other every day like we used to I guess it was comforting knowing he was out there and living. I always used to think that if he could go after anything he wanted then I could too. But now he's not, and I don't know how to deal with that."

The waitress returns and puts their shared dish in the space between them. Coffee ice cream.

Derrick asks for an extra spoon and places it at the spot next to him.


End file.
